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I'm a 20 year old man. My height is 162cm (approx. 5feet 4in) but my weight is only 42kg (approx 92 pounds). This makes my BMI to be approx 16.00. The low weight is not genetic or the result of any disease of any sort. In fact, since the past 5-6 years, I have stuck on the same weight. I tried working out a couple of years back for a year but it didn't work out well. The low weight has started to cause me serious health issues which include all-time low stamina, early exhaustion, weakness in various parts of the body, and low immunity.

I'm planning on starting to work out again, but this time I want to be sure with my workout plan and diet regime. My daily schedule is,

  • 7:30am wake up
  • 8:00am leave for college
  • 8:30am - 5:30pm college
  • 9:30pm dinner
  • 11:00pm sleep

I'm a pure vegetarian. Please let me know if I need to provide any more info than that.

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    Eat eat eat! Just eat like twice as much as you're currently eating and you'll put on weight. Eat constantly. Carry snacks around with you. Combine that with some resistance training, and you'll build some muscle too.
    – user4644
    Commented Nov 23, 2012 at 7:24
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    Could you be a bit more specific about pure vegetarian? What about eggs, milk and fish?
    – Baarn
    Commented Nov 23, 2012 at 7:41
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    This answer might be of use. Short version: lift heavy, eat big, make it a priority. Commented Nov 23, 2012 at 23:24
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    @Informaficker pure vegetarian here in India means no egg, fish, meat, chicken, sea food, etc. milk is ok. :) Commented Nov 24, 2012 at 12:25
  • Don't forget the nutrition side of things. Please join our proposal here: area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/44550/nutrition
    – Kenshin
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 2:30

1 Answer 1

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Yeah so, you obviously need to eat more. If I understand you correctly you fast for 24 hours per day, which in itself is fine, however it is VERY hard to get one day worth of food in one meal. Especially vegetarian meal.

So you need at least one more meal per day, maybe even two more to get into caloric surplus. Think of it this way. To maintain your current weight you need to eat around 1200-1300 kcal/day, you would probably want to be around 1800kcal/day to start adding weight. I would guess you currently eat well below 1200kcal per day. So if you take you current portion size and just eat that amount once more every day you will at least hold your weight and probably gain some. If you are still not adding weight after a couple of weeks, add one more meal.

On a pure plantbased vegan diet I would recommend you start stocking up on beans, lentils and nuts since it is full of protein and is fairly energy dense. Include that in you every meal. Prepare food to eat the next day at the same time you eat your dinner, then just bring that with you to college.

Make a plan with times when you are going to eat your meals and be punctual with your meal time. You will feel stuffed the first couple of weeks, but make sure to eat your meals even if you have to divide it into smaller portions. If you keep to your new meal plan and eat at the same time every day, after a couple of weeks you will get hungry at that time and eating your meals will be easier.

With a lowered immune system I would not recommend you start exercising right now, it will just make you ill. So start with fixing your energy intake. Then after a while you might want to take up some weight training to gain some muscles.

You should also concider going to a doctor, not only for a check up on your overall health but also so a professional can determin if you need to be referred to a weight clinic or any other problems which can't be determined on a forum like this.

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